You want to know about Dana Hunter, then, do you? I'm a science blogger, SF writer, compleat geology addict, Gnu Atheist, and owner of a - excuse me, owned by a homicidal felid. I loves me some Doctor Who and Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers. Sums me up. I'm a Midwest-born Southwesterner transplanted to the Pacific Northwest, which should explain some personality quirks, the tendency to sprinkle Spanish around, and why I'll subject you to some real jawbreakers in the place names department. My cobloggers, Karen Locke, Jacob and Steamforged, and I are delighted to be your cantineras y cantinero. Join us for una tequila. And feel free to follow @dhunterauthor on Twitter. Salud!

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EVENTS

This is one of the most epic trolls I’ve ever read. It says something about our unhinged gun culture that I wasn’t sure it was a troll at first, rather than a man with a very rich fantasy life. Content note for the usual kind of sexism, fat-shaming, toxic masculinity and so forth you’d expect to find in forums full of gun-obsessed people.

Before we get to the excerpt proper, let our host ‘splain what a Mall Ninja is: [Read more…]

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Guess what day it is in India. That’s right, it’s National Science Day! You can check out their Facebook page to see some of the events going on, and Wikipedia has a brief explanation here. Did you know it not only showcases current science, but honors Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman’s discovery of the Raman effect? To which I, as an ordained minister of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, can only say, “R’amen!” Of course. Happy National Science Day, India!

Take, for instance, the Left Behind series, which Fred Clark reads so we mercifully don’t have to. You may be tempted to dismiss them as nothing more than hack writing, lazy dime store thrillers that are nothing more than empty entertainment. But there are people who really truly believe the shit LaHaye and Jenkins are writing is prophesied to come true, and will happen any time now. Fred, being an evangelical Christian himself, is able to get deep into their worldview and show not just how fucked up it is, but how it informs their attitude towards things like taking care of the environment (why bother when you’re gonna be raptured?), world peace (anyone advocating for it is aiding and abetting the Antichrist), and war (bring on those end times!!!). These books both showcase and reinforce the fucked-up worldviews of people who believe they are living in the End Times, are Real True Christians who will be raptured, and love to smirk at those of us who will be left behind to suffer plagues, famine, war and death by their asshole of a god.

Sometimes, it gives me chills, especially when I realize how these folks are trying to make their prophecies self-fulfilling. [Read more…]

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Sometimes, rest areas are fruitful avenues of exploration. Take this little rest stop along the I5 near Douglas, Oregon. Lockwood and I stopped there during our May 2013 trip, and I’m pretty sure we didn’t expect to spend so much time out in the weeds. But what wonderful weeds they were! There was a little forest meadowy area filled with delights. These were among the most spectacular: [Read more…]

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I haven’t said anything about Mike Brown and Eric Garner because I’ve been too angry to talk about it. And a lot of other FtBers have said or linked to the needful things. I hope you’ve read them, and shared them.

There’s nothing for me to say that hasn’t been said by someone else, probably better, but staying silent isn’t an option. Especially not when so many of my fellow white people are just fine with two grand juries deciding not to indict cops who murder black men. You can get them to indict a ham sandwich, but not a pig who’s killed a person of color. And you can get white people to scream about injustice if they get treated impolitely by a traffic cop, but apparently summary execution for the crime of existing while black is fine by them. They’re happy to dig up any petty excuse to justify murder, then. Dude was big and scary. He broke a minor law once. He shouldn’t have resisted the officer who was intent on killing him. [Read more…]

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Hello, there! Are you unhappily joined to a defective uterus, or missing yours altogether? Are you in the market for a working model, but can’t afford a brand-new one (mostly because medical science hasn’t advanced to the point where they can be mass-produced in the lab quite yet, and so you’d have to be a trillionaire to afford the R&D)? Have most of the used uteri you’ve seen for sale been too expensive, too extensively used, or otherwise incompatible?

You’re in luck! I’ve got just the uterus for you. It’s (reasonably) young, has never been used for childbirth, and is only slightly evil. I’m giving it away free* to a good home. It could be yours today! [Read more…]

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About time we had some happy fun times round here. Let us play with some of the first photographs of fall, then, shall we? All of the following photos have bits hidden in them, which anyone with a properly-attuned sense of pareidolia might see. I’ll help you along by giving you Subtle Clues.

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For the second time this summer, a little gray hummingbird has hovered meaningfully in the corner of my porch where a feeder could be hung quite handily, looked at me for a minute, and then zipped away. I am apparently being told in no uncertain terms that a hummingbird feeder is desired. I live to serve not only cats, but hummingbirds! Just think of the photos I could get for you, my darlings!

But I refuse to hang a feeder in ignorance. Advice and recommendations from those of you who know about this stuff would be awesome. The birds, the cat and I all thank you!

This isn’t my hummingbird. That little bugger never hovers when I have a camera ready. This is a female Anna’s hummingbird which vaguely resembles it. Photo by Matthew Field. (CC BY-SA 3.0)

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A rather extensive forest became part of a directed blast deposit: that’s the summary. One moment, you’re a green and pleasant home for much of the local wildlife; the next, you’ve been rudely ripped apart and incorporated within a bunch of rock and ash by a volcano having a bad turn. So it goes.

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I’m knee-deep in creationist textbooks. It takes bloody forever to get through a chapter because I have to constantly stop and look shit up. And I just found a copy of A Beka’s latest mangling of Earth science, so I’ll soon have more work to do. I’ll start posting the results in September for your entertainment/outrage, but for the moment, all I can give you is cat photos.

Misha has a very large porch, and lots of places on it. She has her pillow[Read more…]